PINS - Rule Twelve: Localities - Tyneside

(“We pulled out the thousand lire note and the whole village came to stare at us.”)

We are currently investigating what, and where, is local. And we have moved through various time zones to Tyneside, to find out more. Because without knowing what is local, you can’t make a local decision.

Here’s an easy local decision. Cheer when you see the words THE NORTH and the equally magical phrase “Scotch Corner” picked out in white, on the royal blue motorway sign. This sign *is* a magical one and happens only once: when you pass it. And you should always cheer from the back seat, forgetting the petrol fumes the old 1960s Morris Oxford is belching out.

Make a reconnoitre of the shelves where the chess set is kept. It’s in a stout, thick cardboard box, the faded colours of which (red, green and brown) possess an almost pastel hue now, due to the passage of years. The wooden pieces are solid and smooth and sit well in your hand, it’s pleasing just to hold them. The room the box is in has an overbearing smell of old cigar and cigarette smoke that has somehow taken the form of an invisible tree bark, you could imagine it being a protective layer for all that’s happened in the past here. Note that in your immediate locality, everyone else is standing around watching a football match on the television and shaking their heads. All voices are raised in a high tenor. Next to the chess set are bound volumes of Punch from the 1850s. Be careful as these volumes open the gate to other localities far outside the time and place you are in. 

Find the place in the gimcrack 1950s wardrobe where your father has hidden his small, carefully executed self portraits that he did when he was around 20. They are in oil, on board. You like them.

In one locality, you must avoid the huge flow of piss that acts uncannily like a rain shower - albeit happening at hip height - and keep your feet on the terrace.

Look at the mantelpiece where the black and white glazed pot dogs sit. They’re broken at the back and hold letters and old buttons. But you can’t see that and they own the locality. Remember: anywhere where there is a pair of pot dogs, they own it. Alreet? 

Feel the rough texture of the fake plastic bricks against your back in the games room of the pub near the fire station off Pilgrim Street and wait until the four older women, hunting in a pack, have stopped feeling around inside your pants whilst holding down your wrists. Four vodkas for a quid. You can’t forget those bricks.

Another locality to remember is the spare room: where you secretly wear the long shorts from the 1940s, and - secretly - wish you were living back then. You think you can smell back then, too: the earth and oil, the cinder tracks, the smoke. (You are often telt off for making things up.) It may have been better back then, or maybe not. But you want to know. No point asking those who were there.

Avoid the radgie fellow near Leazes Park who says he’s a werewolf. Similarly avoid the ducks in the slimy pond and the poor sod dressed up as a cow hanging out with the other cows grazing (as is their civic right) on Leazes Moor. This is a place of unhappiness.

Walk to the allotment up the banks and whilst granda is talking to the lads, go and stand in the small greenhouse and breathe in the rich pungency of the tomato plants that clamber in slow time towards the roof arch. Press your face to the glass, squint through the sickly green patina of tommy plant residue, and look down to the river in the distance below. It looks green like a flat, fat snake, the sun only making the dullest of highlights on its surface.

Visit the road where your younger sister was killed.

Repeat after me; the only place to sing Lilibulero is like this.

“Ho, Brother Teague, dost hear the Decree,

Li-li Bullero, Bullen a-la,

Dat we shall have a new Debittie,

Li-li Bullero, Li-li Bullero,

Le-ro, Le-ro, Li-li Bullero, Bullen a-la,

Le-ro, Le-ro, Li-li Bullero, Bullen a-la.”

Realise that the two-bar fire in the tap room of the bar on the High Level where you once played the tuba in the jazz band will never make anybody warm. The tuba playing services will later be transferred to Heworth Colliery Band. In which you wear a peaked cap.

Climb to the top of the Keep and sit on the battlements to watch the trains come in and out of central station. Keep a note of any Scottish ones: that is a special treat for this locality. No health and safety in those days!

An accompanying post to this Rule, with relevant illustrations, can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.